“...who sang out of their windows in despair, fell out of the subway window, jumped in the filthy Passaic, leaped on negroes, cried all over the street, danced on broken wineglasses barefoot smashed phonograph records of nostalgic European 1930s German jazz finished the whiskey and threw up groaning into the bloody toilet, moans in their ears and the blast of colossal steamwhistles, who barreled down the highways of the past journeying to each other’s hotrod-Golgotha jail-solitude watch or Birmingham jazz incarnation, who drove crosscountry seventytwo hours to find out if I had a vision or you had a vision or he had a vision to find out Eternity, who journeyed to Denver, who died in Denver, who came back to Denver & waited in vain, who watched over Denver & brooded & loned in Denver and finally went away to find out the Time, & now Denver is lonesome for her heroes, who fell on their knees in hopeless cathedrals praying for each other’s salvation and light and breasts, until the soul illuminated its hair for a second, who crashed through their minds in jail waiting for impossible criminals with golden heads and the charm of reality in their hearts who sang sweet blues to Alcatraz, who retired to Mexico to cultivate a habit, or Rocky Mount to tender Buddha or Tangiers to boys or Southern Pacific to the black locomotive or Harvard to Narcissus to Woodlawn to the daisychain or grave, who demanded sanity trials accusing the radio of hypnotism & were left with their insanity & their hands & a hung jury, who threw potato salad at CCNY lecturers on Dadaism and subsequently presented themselves on the granite steps of the madhouse with shaven heads and harlequin speech of suicide, demanding instantaneous lobotomy, and who were given instead the concrete void of insulin Metrazol electricity hydrotherapy psychotherapy occupational therapy pingpong & amnesia, who in humorless protest overturned only one symbolic pingpong table, resting briefly in catatonia, returning years later truly bald except for a wig of blood, and tears and fingers, to the visible madman doom of the wards of the madtowns of the East, Pilgrim State’s Rockland’s and Greystone’s foetid halls, bickering with the echoes of the soul, rocking and rolling in the midnight solitude-bench dolmen-realms of love, dream of life a nightmare, bodies turned to stone as heavy as the moon, with mother finally ******,”

“A hat came skipping down the main street of Long Grass, propelled only by the wind, which was sharp for March. The hat was brown felt and had a narrow brim.“I believe that’s Doc Featherston’s hat,” Wyatt said. “He may have lost track of it while setting a limb.”“Or, he might be over at the Orchid fornicating and let it blow out a window,” Doc Holliday suggested.“Doubt it . . . only rich dentists such as yourself can afford the Orchid these days,” Wyatt said.Doc drew his pistol and aimed at the hat but didn’t shoot.“Why would a grown man want to be a dentist anyway?” Wyatt inquired.“Well, for one thing, the cost of equipment is low,” Doc told him. “All you need is a pair of pliers and maybe a chisel for difficult cases.”At the mention of a chisel Wyatt turned pale—he had always been squeamish.“I’m sorry I brought it up,” he said. “Are we going to sit here and let the good doctor’s hat blow clean away?”A crow flew over. Doc shot at it twice, but missed.Wyatt walked out in the street and picked up the hat.Across the street, at the establishment called the Orchid a tall woman in a purple dressing gown came out onto a little balcony and shook out her abundant black hair.“There’s San Saba, what do you think about her?” Doc said.“I don’t often think about her,” Wyatt said. “Jessie’s all the female I can handle, and it ain’t a hundred percent that I can handle her.”“Why do you ask?” he added.“Just to be making conversation, I ain’t a mute like you,” Doc said. “And it’s the only whorehouse in town. They say if you can sprout up twelve inches of dick you get to fuck free.”“Well, I can’t sprout it up and I doubt you can so let’s talk about something else,” Wyatt suggested."

“Bright moonlight streamed in through the parted curtains, lightening the room until all was visible. Though the lingering essence of intoxicants still clouded his brain, Cole became aware of the woman who leaned against the door. His mind felt slow and listless, and he could find no reason for what he saw, nor could he explain his presence in a strange bedroom. His situation struck him as extremely precarious. For all he knew he might momentarily find himself confronted by an outraged husband or an irate father bent on restoring his daughter's honor."Ma'am," he began, sorely chafed at the thickness of his tongue. "I fear I have intruded." Alaina realized escape was impossible, and knew she would have to brazen it out.Her soft laughter broke the silence of the room. "Surely you haven't decided to leave us after you vowed to stay the night, Captain. Can it be that you have forgotten so soon?" She mimicked the relaxed familiarity of the most successful courtesan and her voice was as honey, smooth and cultured. The deception seemed simple enough; she could play this part as successfully as that of ragged urchin. Yet she was thankful for the shadow that shrouded Cole's nakedness, for the game might have dissolved in her own embarrassment and flight. Alaina remembered her uncle had kept a decanter of brandy hidden away in the guest room, and she went to search the bureau for it. This was no time for the captain to sober up. If he would just drink enough and go back to bed, she was sure he would sleep the night through.As she passed before the window, a shaft of silvery moonlight penetrated her garments. The slim but well-curved figure whet Cole's appetite and imagination no small amount. The lust flared through his starved senses, and he felt a familiar tightening in his loins."Here, Captain," the silky voice urged as the woman came back. "Have another drink." Alaina pressed a water glass, liberally filled with brandy, into his hand, then slipped quickly away as he reached for her. Her soft laughter teased him. "Drink first, Captain."

“Marv was your first husband,” Hank gently corrected. He bit his lip, his eyes drifting involuntarily back toward the ticket booth outside the Girl-to-Gorilla tent.“I just don’t see the attraction.”“Fine, I can accept that,” he said. “But would you mind if I went in? You can wait out here, and I’ll be back in ten—”From inside the tent came the squeal and crash of a metal cage door torn from its hinges and tossed to the ground. Annie jumped a step closer to Hank as, at that instant, the piercing shrieks of half a dozen teenage girls erupted inside. One of the tent’s nylon side panels billowed outward, went taut, and focused nearly to a point before a small, almost delicate black fist punched through the orange fabric. The screams from inside the tent were growing more frenzied. There was a tearing sound as those same girls, blind with panic, ripped their way through the tent wall and poured out onto the midway, stumbling over one another, still screaming and laughing, before scattering in half a dozen different directions. Hank watched a few of them go, shaking his head in quiet, resigned amusement, knowing for certain there was now no way in hell he’d get Annie into the show. “They’re a superstitious people,” he explained. “They always overreact to these things.”“Shhhh.” His wife glowered at him and pinched his arm for the third time that night. There was nothing playful about it.Hank winced and pulled his arm away. “All right, then. Let’s move on. We’ll see the gorilla show later. Great show. Trust me. Used to see it when I was a kid.”She took his arm and they moved down the midway away from the ripped tent, weaving their way through the thick Jersey crowds, trying to avoidthe dropped ice-cream cones and puddles of cotton candy vomit as they went.The rides they were passing grew more rickety and treacherous with each passing year. Or maybe, Annie sometimes thought, she and Hank were just getting older."

„All spring she’s been troubled with indigestion. Often in the morning, and then again at night after her young husband has gone to sleep, she’s risen from her bed and dosed herself with Bishop’s Citrate of Magnesia. When she drinks ordinary milk or sweetened tea or sugary lemonade she swallows it down greedily, but Bishop’s cool chalky potion she pours into a china cup and sips with deep, slow concentration, with dignity. She doesn’t know what to think. One day she’s persuaded her liver’s acting up, and the next day her kidneys—she’s only thirty years old, but kidney trouble can start early in life, especially for a woman of my mother’s unorthodox size. Or perhaps the problem stems from constipation. Mrs. Flett next door has suggested this possibility, recommending rhubarb tablets, or else, speaking confidentially, some woman’s trouble. Excessive loss of blood, she tells Mercy, is the cause of discomfort for many young ladies—has Mercy spoken to Dr. Spears? Dr. Spears is known for his sensitivity to women’s complaints; he has a way of squeezing his eyes shut when he phrases his delicate inquiries, of speaking almost poetically of nature’s cycles and balances, of the tide of fertility or the consolation of fruit salts.No, Mercy has not approached Dr. Spears, she would never speak to Dr. Spears of such a thing, she would speak to no one, not even her husband—especially not her husband. Her monthly blood has appeared only twice in her life, springing out of the soft cushions of her genital flesh, staining her underclothes with its appalling brightness, and mocking the small decencies and duties that steady her life: her needlework, her housekeeping, her skill with a flat iron, her preserves and pickles and fresh linens and the lamp chimneys she polishes every single morning.The doses of Citrate of Magnesia help hardly at all. Fruit salts only make her suffering worse. Her abdominal walls have continued to cramp and heave all spring, and she’s wondered at times if her inner membranes might burst with the pressure. Bile rises often in her throat. Her skin itches all over. She experiences scalding attacks of flatulence, especially at night as she lies next to my father, who, out of love, out of delicacy, pretends deep sleep—she can tell from the way he keeps himself curled respectfully to his own side of the bed.“

“The field he was in this morning sloped to a ridge called Norcombe Hill. Through a spur of this hill ran the highway between Emminster and Chalk-Newton. Casually glancing over the hedge, Oak saw coming down the incline before him an ornamental spring waggon, painted yellow and gaily marked, drawn by two horses, a waggoner walking alongside bearing a whip perpendicularly. The waggon was laden with household goods and window plants, and on the apex of the whole sat a woman, young and attractive. Gabriel had not beheld the sight for more than half a minute, when the vehicle was brought to a standstill just beneath his eyes.“The tailboard of the waggon is gone, Miss,” said the waggoner.“Then I heard it fall,” said the girl, in a soft, though not particularly low voice. “I heard a noise I could not account for when we were coming up the hill.”“I’ll run back.”“Do,” she answered.The sensible horses stood — perfectly still, and the waggoner’s steps sank fainter and fainter in the distance.The girl on the summit of the load sat motionless, surrounded by tables and chairs with their legs upwards, backed by an oak settle, and ornamented in front by pots of geraniums, myrtles, and cactuses, together with a caged canary — all probably from the windows of the house just vacated. There was also a cat in a willow basket, from the partly-opened lid of which she gazed with half-closed eyes, and affectionately-surveyed the small birds around.The handsome girl waited for some time idly in her place, and the only sound heard in the stillness was the hopping of the canary up and down the perches of its prison. Then she looked attentively downwards. It was not at the bird, nor at the cat; it was at an oblong package tied in paper, and lying between them. She turned her head to learn if the waggoner were coming. He was not yet in sight; and her eyes crept back to the package, her thoughts seeming to run upon what was inside it. At length she drew the article into her lap, and untied the paper covering; a small swing looking-glass was disclosed, in which she proceeded to survey herself attentively. She parted her lips and smiled.It was a fine morning, and the sun lighted up to a scarlet glow the crimson jacket she wore, and painted a soft lustre upon her bright face and dark hair. The myrtles, geraniums, and cactuses packed around her were fresh and green, and at such a leafless season they invested the whole concern of horses, waggon, furniture, and girl with a peculiar vernal charm.“

“Just what is his place, however? Why does he merit our inter-est? Even his admirers will readily admit that his work is, for the most part, unreadable; philosophically, it escapes banality only to founder in incoherence. As to his vices, they are not startlingly original; Sade invented nothing in this domain, and one finds in psychiatric treatises a profusion of cases at least as interesting as his. The fact is that it is neither as author nor as sexual pervert that Sade compels our attention; it is by virtue of the relationship which he created between these two aspects of himself. Sade's aberrations begin to acquire value when, instead of enduring them as his fixed nature, he elaborates an immense system in order to justify them. Inversely, his books take hold of us as soon as we become aware that for all their repetitiousness, their plati-tudes and clumsiness, he is trying to communicate an experience whose distinguishing characteristic is, nevertheless, a tendency to first presentation, as this extract shows, Beauvoir's argument cen-tres on two main claims. First, in 'assuming' his 'aberrations', rather than enduring them as a natural imposition, Sade made his `psycho-physical destiny' an ethical choice. This choice is ethical because he transcends the mere fact of his psycho-physical make-up by conferring an absolute value upon the aberrations that constituted it. In an extreme form, Sade demonstrates a general truth: the subjective origin of all value. If nothing has a value in itself, but only that which we confer on it, then anything can be valued, as the case of Sade shows. He also, unusually, demon-strates what is otherwise only implicit in Beauvoir's (and Sartre's) existentialist account of the subjective origin of value: the possi-bility of a singular ethic, a one-man morality. Further, he represents what, for most people, is the problem with such a possibility: Sade is a monster whose personal `ethic' abuses others. In `Must We Burn Sade?' Beauvoir is clear that Sade's ethic is not one to be emulated: 'every time we side with a child whose throat has been slit by a sex maniac, we take a stand against him.' (Must We Burn Sade?', p.61) Nevertheless his life has, she says, `an exemplary character' to the extent that the form (rather than content) of his ethic and its metaphysical motivation has a universal significance. This is explained in the elaboration of the second main claim from the opening pages of Beauvoir's essay and concerns Sade's commitment to the principle of subjectiv-ity. Sade's merit lies `in his having proclaimed aloud what everyone admits with shame to himself(`Must We Burn Sade?', p.63): the irrecusable fact of the `separateness' of each individ-ual. This fact is dramatized in Sade's `persistent singularity': 'he had no fellow but himself'.”

“Having arrived at this hasty decision to move within a matter of days, the Adamses settled down to their excellent dinner, which they all ate with relish, for each thought thatthe major problem in his life had just been solved.Except Skippy, who, until this moment, had had no problems. He lay under the table in his accustomed place by Buzz’ feet. Usually his head was up, his ears pointing forward, his mouth ajar to release his eager panting, his tongue extended, and his expression one of sublime expectancy. But as the human voices grew impassioned, Skippy’s keen perception noted the shades of discontent expressed in each. He cocked his head and began to listen intently. ...Skippy loved the house. He had lived in it practically all his life. Actually, you might almost say it was his. For the thing was, the Adamses had bought it because of him. He had been given to Buzz as a birthday surprise when he, Skippy, was three months old. Until then he had lived in a kennel which could not be considered home life. He and Buzz had recognized each other instantly as dog lover and boy worshiper. Two days later the apartment house agent came over to register the complaint of the people downstairs, who could not accustom their ears to the overwhelming sounds of a boy and his dog. The dog, the agent explained regretfully, must go.”

“'Ah, you ladies! Always on the spot when there's something happening!' The voice belonged to Mr Mallett, one of our churchwardens, and its roguish tone made me start guiltily, almost as if I had no right to be discovered outside my own front door. New people moving in? The presence of a furniture van would seem to suggest it,' he went on pompously. 'I expect you know about it.' Well, yes, one usually does,' I said, feeling rather annoyed at his presumption. 'It is rather difficult not to know such things.' I suppose an unmarried woman just over thirty, who lives alone and has no apparent ties, must expect to find herself involved or interested in other people's business, and if she is also a clergyman's daughter then one might really say that there is no hope for her. 'Well, well, tempus fugit, as the poet says,' called out Mr Mallett as he hurried on. I had to agree that it did, but I dawdled long enough to see the furniture men set down a couple of chairs on the pavement, and as I walked up the stairs to my flat I heard the footsteps of a person in the empty rooms below me, pacing about on the bare boards, deciding where each piece should go. Mrs Napier, I thought, for I had noticed a letter addressed to somebody of that name, marked 'To Await Arrival'. But now that she had materialised I felt, perversely, that I did not want to see her, so I hurried into my own rooms and began tidying out my kitchen. I met her for the first time by the dustbins, later that afternoon. The dustbins were in the basement and everybody in the house shared them. There were offices on the ground floor and above them the two flats, not properly self-contained and without every convenience. 'I have to share a bathroom,' I had so often murmured, almost with shame, as if I personally had been found unworthy of a bathroom of my own. I bent low over the bin and scrabbled a few tea leaves and potato peelings out of the bottom of my bucket. I was embarrassed that we should meet like this. I had meant to ask Mrs Napier to coffee one evening. It was to have been a gracious, civilised occasion, with my best coffee cups and biscuits on little silver dishes. And now here I was standing awkwardly in my oldest clothes, carrying a bucket and a wastepaper basket. Mrs Napier spoke first. 'You must be Miss Lathbury,' she said abruptly. 'I've seen your name by one of the door-bells.”

In the harbour, in the island, in the Spanish seas,Are the tiny white houses and the orange trees,And day-long, night-long, the cool and pleasant breezeOf the steady Trade Winds blowing.

There is the red wine, the nutty Spanish ale,the shuffle of the dancers, and the old salt’s tale,The squeaking fiddle, and the soughing in the sailOf the steady Trade Winds blowing.

and o’nights there’s the fire-flies and the yellow moon,And in the ghostly palm trees the sleepy tuneOf the quiet voice calling me, the long low croonOf the steady Trade Winds blowing.

I never see the red rose crown the year

I never see the red rose crown the year, Nor feel the young grass underneath my tread, Without the thought “This living beauty here Is earth’s remembrance of a beauty dead. Surely where all this glory is displayed Love has been quick, like fire, to high ends, Here, in this grass, an altar has been made For some white joy, some sacrifice of friends; Here, where I stand, some leap of human brains Has touched immortal things and left its trace, The earth is happy here, the gleam remains; Beauty is here, the spirit of the place, I touch the faith which nothing can destroy, The earth, the living church of ancient joy.”

“She was yanking inexpertly at a large knot when the dreadful thing happened. Off came the hair, all of it, dangling in a tousled clump from the teeth of the comb. Above Agnes’s smooth broad brow there was nothing; no head, no bald skull. Just an awful, yawning hole. Shivering in terror, Meggie leaned forward to peer inside the doll’s cranium. The inverted contours of cheeks and chin showed dimly, light glittered between the parted lips with their teeth a black, animal silhouette, and above all this were Agnes’s eyes, two horrible clicking balls speared by a wire rod that cruelly pierced her head. Meggie’s scream was high and thin, unchildlike; she flung Agnes away and went on screaming, hands covering her face, shaking and shuddering. Then she felt Frank pull at her fingers and take her into his arms, pushing her face into the side of his neck. Wrapping her arms about him, she took comfort from him until his nearness calmed her enough to become aware of how nice he smelled, all horses and sweat and iron. When she quietened, Frank made her tell him what was the matter; he picked up the doll and stared into its empty head in wonder, trying to remember if his infant universe had been so beset by strange terrors. But his unpleasant phantoms were of people and whispers and cold glances. Of his mother’s face pinched and shrinking, her hand trembling as it held his, the set of her shoulders. What had Meggie seen, to make her take on so? He fancied she would not have been nearly so upset if poor Agnes had only bled when she lost her hair. Bleeding was a fact; someone in the Cleary family bled copiously at least once a week. “Her eyes, her eyes!” Meggie whispered, refusing to look at the doll. “She’s a bloody marvel, Meggie,” he murmured, his face nuzzling into her hair. How fine it was, how rich and full of color! It took him half an hour of cajoling to make her look at Agnes, and half an hour more elapsed before he could persuade her to peer into the scalped hole. He showed her how the eyes worked, how very carefully they had been aligned to fit snugly yet swing easily opened or closed.”

“I leave only the title finished, since:A prologue that starts right away is really sloppy: the perfume of its preceding is lost, just as I said that futurism can only be genuinely practiced by leaving it for later.I will also have said, earlier, that this is one of the twenty-nine prologues of a novel that’s impossible to prologue, as a critic, who surely born in that tranquil country of “ask questions later,” has recently predicted; there’s another, more sympathetic, book, that is, one that’s more given to length and limited in prologues—which can still be remedied—which was going to be called “The Man Who Would Be President But Wasn’t.”* * *

Or, an equivalent:“Buenos Aires hysterical, torn between the hilarious faction and the faction of eternity, and saved by its splendid compatriot, who unifies humorism and passion.” But the title I’ve got left for “the novel permitted a beginning,” which although it begins late has no less of a beginning, and, if he reads it, the reader will wish it were all made of continuations, such as “Novel of Eterna, and of the Child of Melancholy, Sweetheart, of-a-love that was kept unknown.”This last is the title a certain gentleman preferred; he began to read it and promised to come back right away, to finish finding out how the novel is named.”

This bread is light, dissolving, almost air,A little visitation on my tongue,A wafer-thin sensation, hardly there.This taste of wine is brief in flavour, flungA moment to the palate’s roof and fled,Even its aftertaste a memory.Yet this is how He comes. Through wine and breadLove chooses to be emptied into me.

He does not come in unimagined lightToo bright to be denied, too absoluteFor consciousness, too strong for sight,Leaving the seer blind, the poet mute;Chooses instead to seep into each sense,To dye himself into experience.

I saw in Louisiana a live-oak growing,All alone stood it and the moss hung down from the branches,Without any companion it grew there uttering joyous leaves of dark green,And its look, rude, unbending, lusty, made me think of myself,But I wonder’d how it could utter joyous leaves standing alone there without its friend near, for I knew I could not,And I broke off a twig with a certain number of leaves upon it, and twined around it a little moss,And brought it away, and I have placed it in sight in my room,It is not needed to remind me as of my own dear friends,(For I believe lately I think of little else than of them,)Yet it remains to me a curious token, it makes me think of manly love;For all that, and though the live-oak glistens there in Louisiana solitary in a wide flat space,Uttering joyous leaves all its life without a friend a lover near,I know very well I could not.

Uit: Calamus Poems (Fragment)

3.Whoever you are holding me now in hand,Without one thing all will be useless,I give you fair warning, before you attempt me further,I am not what you supposed, but far different.

Who is he that would become my follower?Who would sign himself a candidate for my affec-tions? Are you he?

The way is suspicious—the result slow, uncertain, may-be destructive;You would have to give up all else—I alone would expect to be your God, sole and exclusive,Your novitiate would even then be long and ex-hausting,The whole past theory of your life, and all conformity to the lives around you, would have to be aban-doned;Therefore release me now, before troubling yourself any further—Let go your hand from my shoulders,Put me down, and depart on your way.

Uit: Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets (Vertaald door Bela Shayevich)

“After perestroika, no one was talking about ideas anymore — instead it was credit, interest, and promissory notes; people no longer earned money, they ‘made’ it or ‘scored’ it. Is all this here to stay? ‘The fact that money is a fiction is ineradicable from the Russian soul,’ wrote Marina Tsvetaeva. But it’s as though Ostrovsky and Saltykov-Shchedrin characters have come to life and are promenading down our streets.I asked everyone I met what ‘freedom’ meant. Fathers and children had very different answers. Those who were born in the USSR and those born afterwards do not share a common experience. They’re people from different planets.For the fathers, freedom is the absence of fear; the three days in August when we defeated the putsch. A man with his choice of a hundred kinds of salami is freer than one who only has ten to choose from. Freedom is never being flogged, although no generation of Russians has yet avoided a flogging. Russians don’t understand freedom, they need the Cossack and the whip.For the children: freedom is love; inner freedom is an absolute value. Freedom is when you’re not afraid of your own desires, it’s having lots of money, so that you’ll have everything; it’s when you can live without having to think about freedom. Freedom is normal.In the 90s… yes, we were elated; there’s no way back to that naiveté. We thought that the choice had been made and that communism had been defeated forever. But it was only the beginning…Twenty years have gone by… ‘Don’t scare us with your socialism,’ children tell their parents.From a conversation with a university professor: ‘At the end of the 90s, my students would laugh when I told them stories about the Soviet Union. They were sure that a new future awaited them. Now, it’s a different story… Today’s students have truly seen and felt capitalism: the inequality, the poverty, the shameless wealth. They’ve witnessed the lives of their parents, who never got anything out of the plundering of our country. And they’re oriented toward radicalism. They dream of their own revolution and wear red t-shirts with pictures of Lenin and Che Guevara."

The hilltop trees are bowingUnder the coming of storm.The low gray clouds are trailingLike squadrons that sweep and form,With their ammunition of rain.Then the trumpeter wind gives signalTo unlimber the viewless guns;The cattle huddle together;Indoors the farmer runs;And the first shot lashes the pane.They charge through the quiet orchard;One pear tree is snapped like a wand;As they sweep from the shattered hillside,Ruffling the blackened pond,Ere the sun takes the field again.

1.My head so big they had to pry me out. I'm sorry Bird (is what I call my mother). Cassius Marcellus Clay, Muhammad Ali; you can say my name in any language, any continent: Ali.

2.Two photographs of Emmett Till, born my year, on my birthday. One, he's smiling, happy, and the other one is after. His mother did the bold thing, kept the casket open, made the thousands look upon his bulging eyes, his twisted neck, her lynched black boy. I couldn't sleep for thinking, Emmett Till.

One day I went Down to the train tracks, found some iron shoe-shine rests and planted them between the ties and waited for a train to come, and watched the train derail, and ran, and after that I slept at night.

The man is looking for trouble, thrills, sublime ecstasies, places devoid of folklore, deals, calculated approximations, objects of desire that hold your attention and help you keep your cool, the latest rage at your fingertips, binges, infatuations, sexual icons, irrefutable proofs, joyrides, advice within parentheses, green lights, comfy shoes, forms of expression that presume supremacy, free tickets to the game, ways of killing time that are reckless and frenzied, the upper hand before bellyaching, straight answers. The woman, however, is looking for love.

“Even if I’m hated, and ostracized, and persecuted, and in the end destroyed, nothing can make me black. And so those who are cannot but remain suspicious of me. In their eyes my very efforts to identify myself with Gordon, with all the Gordons, would be obscene. Every gesture I make, every act I commit in my efforts to help them makes it more difficult for them to define their real needs and discover for themselves their integrity and affirm their own dignity. How else could we hope to arrive beyond predator and prey, helper and helped, white and black, and find redemption? On the other hand: what can I do but what I have done? I cannot choose not to intervene: that would be a denial and a mockery not only of everything I believe in, but of the hope that compassion may survive among men. By not acting as I did I would deny the very possibility of that gulf to be bridged. If I act, I cannot but lose. But if I do not act, it is a different kind of defeat, equally decisive and maybe worse. Because then I will not even have a conscience left. The end seems ineluctable: failure, defeat, loss. The only choice I have left is whether I am prepared to salvage a little honour, a little decency, a little humanity — or nothing. It seems as if a sacrifice is impossible to avoid, whatever way one looks at it. But at least one has the choice between a wholly futile sacrifice and one that might, in the long run, open up a possibility, however negligible or dubious, of something better, less sordid and more noble, for our children…”

“I mean,” said little Father Brown, from the corner of the room, “I mean that cigar Mr. Brayne is finishing. It seems nearly as long as a walking-stick.”Despite the irrelevance there was assent as well as irritation in Valentin’s face as he lifted his head.“Quite right,” he remarked sharply. “Ivan, go and see about Mr. Brayne again, and bring him here at once.”The instant the factotum had closed the door, Valentin addressed the girl with an entirely new earnestness.“Lady Margaret,” he said, “we all feel, I am sure, both gratitude and admiration for your act in rising above your lower dignity and explaining the Commandant’s conduct. But there is a hiatus still. Lord Galloway, I understand, met you passing from the study to the drawing-room, and it was only some minutes afterwards that he found the garden and the Commandant still walking there.”“You have to remember,” replied Margaret, with a faint irony in her voice, “that I had just refused him, so we should scarcely have come back arm in arm. He is a gentleman, anyhow; and he loitered behind—and so got charged with murder.”“In those few moments,” said Valentin gravely, “he might really—”The knock came again, and Ivan put in his scarred face.“Beg pardon, sir,” he said, “but Mr. Brayne has left the house.”“Left!” cried Valentin, and rose for the first time to his feet.“Gone. Scooted. Evaporated,” replied Ivan in humorous French. “His hat and coat are gone, too, and I’ll tell you something to cap it all. I ran outside the house to find any traces of him, and I found one, and a big trace, too.”“What do you mean?” asked Valentin.“I’ll show you,” said his servant, and reappeared with a flashing naked cavalry sabre, streaked with blood about the point and edge. Everyone in the room eyed it as if it were a thunderbolt; but the experienced Ivan went on quite quietly:“I found this,” he said, “flung among the bushes fifty yards up the road to Paris. In other words, I found it just where your respectable Mr. Brayne threw it when he ran away.”There was again a silence, but of a new sort. Valentin took the sabre, examined it, reflected with unaffected concentration of thought, and then turned a respectful face to O’Brien. “Commandant,” he said, “we trust you will always produce this weapon if it is wanted for police examination. Meanwhile,” he added, slapping the steel back in the ringing scabbard, “let me return you your sword.”

"The best thing for being sad," replied Merlin, beginning to puff and blow, "is to learn something. That's the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then — to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a lot of things there are to learn".(...)

“He caught a glimpse of that extraordinary faculty in man, that strange, altruistic, rare, and obstinate decency which will make writers or scientists maintain their truths at the risk of death. Eppur si muove, Galileo was to say; it moves all the same. They were to be in a position to burn him if he would go on with it, with his preposterous nonsense about the earth moving round the sun, but he was to continue with the sublime assertion because there was something which he valued more than himself. The Truth. To recognize and to acknowledge What Is. That was the thing which man could do, which his English could do, his beloved, his sleeping, his now defenceless English. They might be stupid, ferocious, unpolitical, almost hopeless. But here and there, oh so seldome, oh so rare, oh so glorious, there were those all the same who would face the rack, the executioner, and even utter extinction, in the cause of something greater than themselves. Truth, that strange thing, the jest of Pilate's. Many stupid young men had thought they were dying for it, and many would continue to die for it, perhaps for a thousand years. They did not have to be right about their truth, as Galileo was to be. It was enough that they, the few and martyred, should establish a greatness, a thing above the sum of all they ignorantly had.”

You want me to be the dawnYou want me made of seasprayMade of mother-of-pearlThat I be a lilyChaste above all othersOf tenuous perfumeA blossom closed

That not even a moonbeamMight have touched meNor a daisyCall herself my sisterYou want me like snowYou want me whiteYou want me to be the dawn

You who had allThe cups before youOf fruit and honeyLips dyed purpleYou who in the banquetCovered in grapevinesLet go of your fleshCelebrating BacchusYou who in the darkGardens of DeceitDressed in redRan towards Destruction

You who maintainYour bones intactOnly by some miracleOf which I know notYou ask that I be white(May God forgive you)You ask that I be chaste(May God forgive you)You ask that I be the dawn!

Flee towards the forestGo to the mountainsClean your mouthLive in a hutTouch with your handsThe damp earthFeed yourselfWith bitter rootsDrink from the rocksSleep on the frostClean your clothesWith saltpeter and waterTalk with the birdsAnd set sail at dawnAnd when your fleshHas returned to youAnd when you have putInto it the soulThat through the bedroomsBecame entangledThen, good man,Ask that I be whiteAsk that I be like snowAsk that I be chaste

“By careful tailoring the broad shoulders of Ben Connor were made to appear fashionably slender, and he disguised the depth of his chest by a stoop whose model slouched along Broadway somewhere between sunset and dawn. He wore, moreover, the first or second pair of spats that had ever stepped off the train at Lukin Junction, a glowing Scotch tweed, and a Panama hat of the color and weave of fine old linen. There was a skeleton at this Feast of Fashion, however, for only tight gloves could make the stubby fingers and broad palms of Connor presentable. At ninety-five in the shade gloves were out of the question, so he held a pair of yellow chamois in one hand and in the other an amber-headed cane. This was the end of the little spur-line, and while the train backed off down the track, staggering across the switch, Ben Connor looked after it, leaning upon his cane just forcibly enough to feel the flection of the wood. This was one of his attitudes of elegance, and when the train was out of sight, and only the puffs of white vapor rolled around the shoulder of the hill, he turned to look the town over, having already given Lukin Junction ample time to look over Ben Connor.The little crowd was not through with its survey, but the eye of the imposing stranger abashed it. He had one of those long somber faces which Scotchmen call "dour." The complexion was sallow, heavy pouches of sleeplessness lay beneath his eyes, and there were ridges beside the corners of his mouth which came from an habitual compression of the lips. Looked at in profile he seemed to be smiling broadly so that the gravity of the full face was always surprising. It was this that made the townsfolk look down. After a moment, they glanced back at him hastily. Somewhere about the corners of his lips or his eyes there was a glint of interest, a touch of amusement--they could not tell which, but from that moment they were willing to forget the clothes and look at the man.While Ben Connor was still enjoying the situation, a rotund fellow bore down on him."You're Mr. Connor, ain't you? You wired for a room in the hotel? Come on, then. My rig is over here. These your grips?"He picked up the suit case and the soft leather traveling bag, and led the way to a buckboard at which stood two downheaded ponies.”

A all of fire shoots through the tamarackIn scarlet splendor, on voluptuous wings;Delirious joy the pyrotechnist brings,Who marks for us high summer’s almanac.How instantly the red-coat hurtles back!No fiercer flame has flashed beneath the sky.Note now the rapture in his cautious eye,The conflagration lit along his track.Winged soul of beauty, tropic in desire,Thy love seems alien in our northern zone;Thou giv’st to our green lands a burst of fireAnd callest back the fables we disown.The hot equator thou mightst well inspire,Or stand above some Eastern monarch’s throne.

“Katie Finglas was coming to the end of a tiring day in the salon. Anything bad that could happen had happened. A woman had not told them about an allergy and had come out with lumps and a rash on her forehead. A bride’s mother had thrown a tantrum and said that she looked like a laughingstock. A man who had wanted streaks of blond in his hair became apoplectic when, halfway through the process, he had inquired what they would cost. Katie’s husband, Garry, had placed both his hands innocently on the shoulders of a sixty-year-old female client, who had then told him that she was going to sue him for sexual harassment and assault. Katie looked now at the man standing opposite her, a big priest with sandy hair mixed with gray. “You’re Katie Finglas and I gather you run this establishment,” the priest said, looking around the innocent salon nervously as if it were a high-class brothel. “That’s right, Father,” Katie said with a sigh. What could be happening now? “It’s just that I was talking to some of the girls who work here, down at the center on the quays, you know, and they were telling me . . .”Katie felt very tired. She employed a couple of high school dropouts: she paid them properly, trained them. What could they have been complaining about to a priest?“Yes, Father, what exactly is the problem?” she asked.“Well, it is a bit of a problem. I thought I should come to you directly, as it were.” He seemed a little awkward.“Very right, Father,” Katie said. “So tell me what it is.”“It’s this woman, Stella Dixon. She’s in hospital, you see . . .”“Hospital?” Katie’s head reeled. What could this involve? Someone who had inhaled the peroxide?“I’m sorry to hear that.” She tried for a level voice. »

“The Secret Service holds much that is kept secret even from very senior officers in the organization. Only M. and his Chief of Staff know absolutely everything there is to know. The latter is responsible for keeping the Top Secret record known as The War Book' so that, in the event of the death of both of them, the whole story, apart from what is available to individual Sections and Stations, would be available to their successors. One thing that James Bond, for instance, didn't know was the machinery at Headquarters for dealing with the public, whether friendly or otherwise — drunks, lunatics, bona fide applications to join the Service, and enemy agents with plans for penetration or even assassination. On that cold, clear morning in November he was to see the careful cog-wheels in motion.The girl at the switchboard at the Ministry of Defence flicked the switch to 'Hold' and said to her neighbour, 'It's another nut who says he's James Bond. Even knows his code number. Says he wants to speak to M. personally.' The senior girl shrugged. The switchboard had had quite a few such calls since, a year before, James Bond's death on a mission to Japan had been announced in the Press. There had even been one pestiferous woman who, at every full moon, passed on messages from Bond from Uranus where it seemed he had got stuck while awaiting entry into heaven. She said, 'Put him through to Liaison, Pat.' The Liaison Section was the first cog in the machine, the first sieve. The operator got back on the line: 'Just a moment, sir. I'll put you on to an officer who may be able to help you.' James Bond, sitting on the edge of his bed, said, 'Thank you.' He had expected some delay before he could establish his identity. He had been warned to expect it by the charming 'Colonel Boris' who had been in charge of him for the past few months after he had finished his treat-ment in the luxurious Institute on the Nevsky Prospekt in Leningrad. A man's voice came on the line. 'Captain Walker speaking. Can I help you?' James Bond spoke slowly and clearly. 'This is Commander James Bond speaking. Number 007. Would you put me through to M., or his secretary, Miss Moneypenny. I want to make an appointment.' Captain Walker pressed two buttons on the side of his telephone. One of them switched on a tape recorder for the use of his department, the other alerted one of the duty officers in the Action Room of the Special Branch at Scotland Yard that he should listen to the conversation, trace the call, and at once put a tail on the caller."

Branches crossing the air. Branches cutting the air. Cutting across the interminable skin of sky. Lashing the sky. Of us all you have is shreds of sky, fervor. We are shreds. Live parts of a tree. Goldwork applied painfully onto the air, the skin of air is what you have. The blue flesh of sky. Skin that you cannot trample. We want you to want to hug us. We like that you try to hold onto the sky. We like that your hands knock against the branches. We like that you direct the branches in the air. We all want you to cut us. A gust of birds. We want you to cover our mouths. The strands of your veins calmly against the skin of sky. Hold us from within the pulse, fervor.”

Above our knives

Above our knives. May they come. May other masks recognized worldwide come to give you some prize. May they come disguised as volcano or jungle. As purified water. As telephone or thirst. May they come simulating possession of fuel and breathing. May minds unite with the disguise of presidency. Questions for girls. That life sustained in the codes. May he disguised as art come to kiss our petals. Our masks will lick their masks and we’ll keep everything for ourselves. May that one come too, she disguised as light, and also that other, she disguised as rain.”

They are not all beasts. One is a man, for example, and one is a bird.

I, Matthew, am a man.

"And I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto me"--

That is Jesus. But then Jesus was not quite a man. He was the Son of Man Filius Meus, O remorseless logic Out of His own mouth.

I, Matthew, being a man Cannot be lifted up, the Paraclete To draw all men unto me, Seeing I am on a par with all men.

I, on the other hand, Am drawn to the Uplifted, as all men are drawn, To the Son of Man Filius Meus

Wilt thou lift me up, Son of Man_?How my heart beats! I am man.

I am man, and therefore my heart beats, and throws the dark blood from side to side All the time I am lifted up.

Yes, even during my uplifting.

And if it ceased? If it ceased, I should be no longer man As I am, if my heart in uplifting ceased to beat, to toss the dark blood from side to side, causing my myriad secret streams.

After the cessation I might be a soul in bliss, an angel, approximating to the Uplifted; But that is another matter; I am Matthew, the man, And I am not that other angelic matter.

So I will be lifted up, Saviour, But put me down again in time, Master, Before my heart stops beating, and I become what I am not. Put me down again on the earth, Jesus, on the brown soil Where flowers sprout in the acrid humus, and fade into humus again. Where beasts drop their unlicked young, and pasture, and

drop their droppings among the turf. Where the adder darts horizontal. Down on the damp, unceasing ground, where my feet belong And even my heart, Lord, forever, after all uplifting: The crumbling, damp, fresh land, life horizontal and ceaseless.

Matthew I am, the man. And I take the wings of the morning, to Thee, Crucified, Glorified. But while flowers club their petals at evening And rabbits make pills among the short grass And long snakes quickly glide into the dark hole in the wall, hearing man approach, I must be put down, Lord, in the afternoon, And at evening I must leave off my wings of the spirit As I leave off my braces And I must resume my nakedness like a fish, sinking down the dark reversion of night Like a fish seeking the bottom, Jesus, ICTHUS Face downwards Veering slowly Down between the steep slopes of darkness, fucus-dark, seaweed-fringed valleys of the waters under the sea Over the edge of the soundless cataract Into the fathomless, bottomless pit Where my soul falls in the last throes of bottomless convulsion, and is fallen Utterly beyond Thee, Dove of the Spirit; Beyond everything, except itself.

Nay, Son of Man, I have been lifted up. To Thee I rose like a rocket ending in mid-heaven. But even Thou, Son of Man, canst not quaff out the dregs of terrestrial manhood! They fall back from Thee.

They fall back, and like a dripping of quicksilver taking the downward track. Break into drops, burn into drops of blood, and dropping, dropping take wing Membraned, blood-veined wings.

On fans of unsuspected tissue, like bats They thread and thrill and flicker ever downward To the dark zenith of Thine antipodes Jesus Uplifted.

Bat-winged heart of man Reversed flame Shuddering a strange way down the bottomless pit To the great depths of its reversed zenith.

Afterwards, afterwards Morning comes, and I shake the dews of night from the wings of my spirit And mount like a lark, Beloved.

But remember, Saviour, That my heart which like a lark at heaven's gate singing, hovers morning-bright to Thee, Throws still the dark blood back and forth In the avenues where the bat hangs sleeping, upside-down And to me undeniable, Jesus.

Listen, Paraclete. I can no more deny the bat-wings of my fathom-flickering spirit of darkness Than the wings of the Morning and Thee, Thou Glorified.

I am Matthew, the Man: It is understood. And Thou art Jesus, Son of Man Drawing all men unto Thee, but bound to release them when the hour strikes.

I have been, and I have returned. I have mounted up on the wings of the morning, and I have dredged down to the zenith's reversal. Which is my way, being man. Gods may stay in mid-heaven, the Son of Man has climbed to the Whitsun zenith, But I, Matthew, being a man Am a traveller back and forth. So be it.

I married you for all the wrong reasons,charmed by your dangerous family history,by the innocent muscles, bulging like hiddenweapons under your shirt, by your naive ties,the colors of painted scraps of sunset.I was charmed too by your assumptionsabout me: my serenity— that mirror waiting to becracked, my flashy acrobatics with knives in the kitchen.How wrong we both were about each other,and how happy we have been.

To A Daughter Leaving Home

When I taught youat eight to ridea bicycle, loping alongbeside youas you wobbled awayon two round wheels,my own mouth roundingin surprise when you pulledahead down the curvedpath of the park,I kept waitingfor the thudof your crash as Isprinted to catch up,while you grewsmaller, more breakablewith distance,pumping, pumpingfor your life, screamingwith laughter,the hair flappingbehind you like ahandkerchief wavinggoodbye.

“As if I knew where I was going, I put on an air of choosing and hanged my direction, taking a different street on my right, one that was better lit. "Broadway" it was called. I read the name on a sign. High up, far above the uppermost stories, there was still a bit of daylight, with sea gulls and patches of sky. We moved in the lower light, a sick sort of jungle light, so gray that the street seemed to be full of grimy cotton waste.That street was like a dismal gash, endless, with us at the bottom of it filling it from side to side, advancing from sorrow to sorrow, toward an end that is never in sight, the end of all the streets in the world.There were no cars or carriages, only people and more people.This was the priceless district, I was told later, the gold district : Manhattan.You can enter it only on foot, like a church. It's the banking heart and center of the present-day world. Yet some of those people spit on the sidewalk as they pass. You've got to have your nerve with you.It's a district filled with gold, a miracle, and through the doors you can actually hear the miracle, the sound of dollars being crumpled, for the Dollar is always too light, a genuine Holy Ghost, more precious than blood.I found time to go and see them, I even went in and spoke to the employees who guard the cash. They're sad and underpaid.When the faithful enter their bank, don't go thinking they can help themselves as they please. Far from it. In speaking to Dollar, they mumble words through a little grill; that's their confessional. Not much sound, dim light, a tiny wicket between high arches, that's all. They don't swallow the Host, they put it on their hearts. I couldn't stay there long admiring them. I had to follow the crowd in the street, between those walls of smooth shadow.”

“It stinks of peanuts and cheap candy. A love song drifts over from the phonograph-record department. The salesgirl is elaborately painted. You buy what you want; and you leave. The street is sunny. The blind Negress on the bus says, "I'm by myself. I'm by myself at home now. I'm by myself on the street. I'm by myself. I'm by myself so much I'm like a statue. I'm by myself like a statue all the time." She shakes her portable radio. "She ain't working. I've had her on since Ninety-sixth Street and she ain't made a sound. I guess I'll have to get her fixed again. She wears out quick." The man on the train. "Well, I guess I look cheerful enough, but I'm on my way to the hospital. They just called me from the office to tell me that C. fell out of an apple tree and broke her leg in two places. They called me at the office a few minutes ago and I rushed over here and took the train. . . ."These Westchester Sunday nights. There has usually been a party on Saturday night so you wake up with a faint hangover and a mouth burned by a green cigar. The clothes you have left in a heap on the floor smell of stale perfume. You take a shower. You put on old clothes. You drive your wife to church and your children to Sunday school. You rake the leaves off the flower bed. They are too wet to burn. You put a chemical fertilizer on the lawn and examine the bulbs. The Rockinhams, on their way to a Sunday-lunch party at the Armstrongs', shout their good mornings from the sidewalk. "Isn't it a glorious day; glorious, glorious." Your wife and children return from church, still in their stiff clothes. You have a drink before lunch. Sometimes there are guests. You take a walk; you rake more leaves. The children scatter to play with other children. The southbound local, the train that aunts, uncles, and cousins who have gone into the suburbs for lunch take home; the train that cooks, maids, butlers, and other menservants take into town for their half holiday. Sunday is almost over.Awake before dawn, feeling tired and full of resolutions. Do not drink. Do not et cetera, et cetera. The noise of birdsong swelling: flickers, chickadees, cardinals. Then in the midst of this loud noise I thought I heard a parrot. "Prolly want a crackeer," he said.”

“At puberty he discovered in himself a passion for the arts and for academic scholarship; decided by his junior prep-school year that he'd be a poet, a professor of literature or maybe of art history, and on the side a jazz pianist, although he knew his way around classical guitar and string bass as well. Enrolled in the comparably prestigious but decidedly less classy VVLU instead of Harvard/ Yale/Princeton, because it offered an experimental program wherein selected students could on their adviser's recommendation become virtual Ph.D. candidates early in their undergraduate careers, commence supervised original research in their chosen disciplines, and complete their doctorates as early as five years after matriculation. Al was, moreover, no stranger to the capitals of Europe and elsewhere, the Baumanns having often vacationed abroad before and after the war as well as having gone with Doctor Dad to oncological conferences in sundry foreign venues-whence their son had acquired what to friend Will, at least, was an enviable familiarity with places and languages, wines and cuisines, and the ways of the world, including self-confidence with the opposite sex: a sophistication the more impressive because worn lightly, even self-deprecatingly."Trivia," Al liked to say about such casually imparted but attentively received life lessons as that slope-shouldered red-wine bottles contain Burgundies and round-shouldered ones Bordeaux, the former to be enjoyed promptly and the latter "laid down" some years to mature; that both kinds need to "breathe" awhile after opening before being drunk (except for Châteauneuf-du-Pape); that provolone has four syllables, not three; that making circles with one's thumbs and forefingers is a handy reminder that one's bread plate on a restaurant table is the one at one's left hand (small "b") and one's drinking glass the one at one's right (small "d"): "It's what's here, here, and here that matters," indicating in turn his or Will's (or Winnie's) head, heart, and crotch.But from whom if not gentle (slope-shouldered, indeed Chianti-bottle-shaped) Al Baumann did Will learn how to tie a full-Windsor necktie knot, navigate the city's bus and trolley lines, successfully hail a cruising taxicab and compute the driver's tip, play sambas and rhumbas and kazatskies and frailichs as the occasion warranted in addition to their new jazz trio's usual repertory?”

“At first there was nothing on my desk. Under the table were empty drawers and in the ceiling a hole, where, as it later turned out, a chandelier would be fitted. “Bring me a lamp!” I shouted to the lobby. A lamp was brought. This happened some time ago. Everything is ready and everything has been planned. And most importantly: everything has been done. I do not have to do anything. The system functions by itself. I just watch and enjoy. Astonishing, I should say, how much I like this. The last thing I hung on the wall was a picture of David Allmighty. Precisely above my desk. I know there is something similar about the two of us. I know that this something stands out. If I had a son, I would put a picture of him there, too. Yes: me, my son and David Allmighty. That would be fun. Regrettably I do not have a son. Here and now. Moreover, there is really no particular need for David Allmighty, but some clients can more easily accept the thought that someone grand and distant creates certain solutions, which they are offered. Many of the moves I have made are ascribed to David Allmighty. But let the people talk. Now there is only the naming left. I cannot be bothered with that. I will let him name. But before he starts to name, there is one more thing. He will ask at any moment. * “Who else will be in my cabinet?” I ask at last. Everything has been unpacked, everything has been done, but he still hasn’t told me. Well, I shouldn’t stay here alone! He keeps repeating that creative work is a dialogue. Why should I be talking to myself then? “Sleep, sleep well tonight, because you will have a companion tomorrow,” he grins and scratches his gold Rolex. “

“Jules, the celebrated head waiter of the Grand Babylon, was bending formally towards the alert, middle-aged man who had just entered the smoking-room and dropped into a basket-chair in the corner by the conservatory. It was 7.45 on a particularly sultry June night, and dinner was about to be served at the Grand Babylon. Men of all sizes, ages, and nationalities, but every one alike arrayed in faultless evening dress, were dotted about the large, dim apartment. A faint odour of flowers came from the conservatory, and the tinkle of a fountain. The waiters, commanded by Jules, moved softly across the thick Oriental rugs, balancing their trays with the dexterity of jugglers, and receiving and executing orders with that air of profound importance of which only really first-class waiters have the secret. The atmosphere was an atmosphere of serenity and repose, characteristic of the Grand Babylon. It seemed impossible that anything could occur to mar the peaceful, aristocratic monotony of existence in that perfectly-managed establishment. Yet on that night was to happen the mightiest upheaval that the Grand Babylon had ever known.‘Yes, sir?’ repeated Jules, and this time there was a shade of august disapproval in his voice: it was not usual for him to have to address a customer twice.‘Oh!’ said the alert, middle-aged man, looking up at length. Beautifully ignorant of the identity of the great Jules, he allowed his grey eyes to twinkle as he caught sight of the expression on the waiter’s face.‘Bring me an Angel Kiss.’‘Pardon, sir?’‘Bring me an Angel Kiss, and be good enough to lose no time.’‘If it’s an American drink, I fear we don’t keep it, sir.’ The voice of Jules fell icily distinct, and several men glanced round uneasily, as if to deprecate the slightest disturbance of their calm. The appearance of the person to whom Jules was speaking, however, reassured them somewhat, for he had all the look of that expert, the travelled Englishman, who can differentiate between one hotel and another by instinct, and who knows at once where he may make a fuss with propriety, and where it is advisable to behave exactly as at the club. The Grand Babylon was a hotel in whose smoking-room one behaved as though one was at one’s club.”

„I did not ask him anything further and told him only that I would wait for him. He took off the bags that had been hanging on his saddle, put them away out of sight in the burned corner of the cabin, looked over the stirrups and bridle and, as he finished saddling, smiled and said:“I am ready. I’m going to awake my ‘comrades.’” Half an hour after the morning drink of tea, my three guests took their leave. I remained out of doors and was engaged in splitting wood for my stove. Suddenly, from a distance, rifle shots rang through the woods, first one, then a second. Afterwards all was still. From the place near the shots a frightened covey of blackcock broke and came over me. At the top of a high pine a jay cried out. I listened for a long time to see if anyone was approaching my hut but everything was still.On the lower Yenisei it grows dark very early. I built a fire in my stove and began to cook my soup, constantly listening for every noise that came from beyond the cabin walls. Certainly I understood at all times very clearly that death was ever beside me and might claim me by means of either man, beast, cold, accident or disease. I knew that nobody was near me to assist and that all my help was in the hands of God, in the power of my hands and feet, in the accuracy of my aim and in my presence of mind. However, I listened in vain. I did not notice the return of my stranger. Like yesterday he appeared all at once on the threshold. Through the steam I made out his laughing eyes and his fine face. He stepped into the hut and dropped with a good deal of noise three rifles into the corner.“Two horses, two rifles, two saddles, two boxes of dry bread, half a brick of tea, a small bag of salt, fifty cartridges, two overcoats, two pairs of boots,” laughingly he counted out. “In truth today I had a very successful hunt.”In astonishment I looked at him.“What are you surprised at?” he laughed. “Komu nujny eti tovarischi? Who’s got any use for these fellows? Let us have tea and go to sleep. Tomorrow I will guide you to another safer place and then go on.”

"Ha'm'faked!" No response. "Ha'm'faked! Ha'm'fakedr' ("Commander! Commander!") The watch sergeant roughly shakes the company commander's shoulder. Haganah captain Zev Barak, born Wolfgang Berkowitz, rolls over and half opens heavy eyes. "What now?" "Sir, they're coming again." Barak sits up and glances at his watch. L'Azazel! Asleep a mere ten minutes, how can he have dreamed such a long crazy dream, himself and his Moroccan wife Nakhama in the Vienna of his boyhood, rowing on a lake, riding a Ferris wheel, eating pastry in a Ringstrasse café? Around him on the ground the militiamen sprawl asleep. Beyond the sandbags and the earthworks rifle-toting lookouts pace the hilltop, peering down at the narrow moonlit highway from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, which here goes snaking through the mountain pass. Wearily, Zev Barak gets to his feet in a cold night wind. Unshaven, grimy, in a shabby uniform with no insignia of rank, the captain at twenty-four looks barely older than his troops. He follows the sergeant to an outcropping of rock amid scrubby trees, where the sentry, a scrawny boy in a Palmakh wool cap, points down at the road. Barak edges out on the rocks and looks through binoculars at the moving shadows. "All right," he says, sick at heart, to the sergeant. "Go ahead and wake the men." Within minutes they stand in a semicircle around him, some thirty tousle-headed youths, many of them bearded, yawning and rubbing their eyes. "It's a pretty big gang this time, maybe a hundred or so," he says in a matter-of-fact voice, though he feels that in this fight against odds, after months of close calls, he may really be about to die. He has been hearing that anxious inner voice more than once lately. Here he is still alive, just very worn out and scared, and he must keep up the spirits of these weary hard-pressed youngsters. "But we have plenty of ammunition, and we've beaten them off before. This hill is the key to Kastel, so let's hold our ground, no matter what! Understood? Then prepare for action." In minutes, Barak's troops, armed and helmeted, surround him once more. No more yawns now; grim youthful faces under variegated headgear, from World War I tin hats to British and German steel casques, and also some ragged wool caps. "Soldiers, you're a fine unit. You've proven yourselves. Fight the way you did before, and you'll repulse them again. Remember, the Russians had a motto, 'If you have to go, take ten Germans with you.' So if any of us have to go, let's each take twenty of them with us! We've got the high ground, and we're fighting for our lives, our homes, and the future of the Jewish people."

"No, I haven't. I wrote her that I would go to the St. Mark, and I begged her to come and let me talk to her even if she didn't intend to go home with me. But she didn't come. I waited three days, and she didn't come, didn't even send me a message of any sort." Spade nodded his blond satan's head, frowned sympathetically, and tightened his lips together. "It was horrible," Miss Wonderly said, trying to smile. "I couldn't sit there like that--waiting--not knowing what had happened to her, what might be happening to her." She stopped trying to smile. She shuddered. "The only address I had was General Delivery. I wrote her another letter, and yesterday afternoon I went to the Post Office. I stayed there until after dark, but I didn't see her. I went there again this morning, and still didn't see Corinne, but I saw Floyd Thursby." Spade nodded again. His frown went away. In its place came a look of sharp attentiveness. "He wouldn't tell me where Corinne was," she went on, hope-lessly. "He wouldn't tell me anything, except that she was well and happy. But how can I believe that? That is what he would tell me anyhow, isn't it?" "Sure," Spade agreed. "But it might be true." "I hope it is. I do hope it is," she exclaimed. "But I can't go back home like this, without having seen her, without even having talked to her on the phone. He wouldn't take me to her. He said she didn't want to see me. I can't believe that. He promised to tell her he had seen me, and to bring her to see me--if she would come--this evening at the hotel. He said he knew she wouldn't. He promised to come himself if she wouldn't. He--" She broke off with a startled hand to her mouth as the door opened. The man who had opened the door came in a step, said, "Oh, excuse me!" hastily took his brown hat from his head, and backed out. "It's all right, Miles," Spade told him. "Come in. Miss Wonderly, this is Mr. Archer, my partner. Miles Archer came into the office again, shutting the door behind him, ducking his head and smiling at Miss Wonderly, making a vaguely polite gesture with the hat in his hand. He was of medium height, solidly built, wide in the shoulders, thick in the neck, with a jovial heavy-jawed red face and some grey in his close-trimmed hair. He was apparently as many years past forty as Spade was past thirty”.

“The evening when we first heard Sparsholt’s name seems the best place to start this little memoir. We were up in my rooms, talking about the Club. Peter Coyle, the painter, was there, and Charlie Farmonger, and Evert Dax. A sort of vote had taken place, and I had emerged as the secretary. I was the oldest by a year, and as I was exempt from service I did nothing but read. Evert said, “Oh, Freddie reads two books a day,” which may have been true; I protested that my rate was slower if the books were in Italian, or Russian. That was my role, and I played it with the supercilious aplomb of a student actor. The whole purpose of the Club was getting well-known writers to come and speak to us, and read aloud from their latest work; we offered them a decent dinner, in those days a risky promise, and after dinner a panelled room packed full of keen young readers—a provision we were rather more certain of. When the bombing began people wanted to know what the writers were thinking. Now Charlie suggested Orwell, and one or two names we had failed to net last year did the rounds again. Might Stephen Spender come, or Rebecca West? Nancy Kent was already lined up, to talk to us about Spain. Evert in his impractical way mentioned Auden, who was in New York, and unlikely to return while the War was on. (“Good riddance too,” said Charlie.) It was Peter who said, surely knowing how Evert was hoping he wouldn’t, “Well, why don’t we get Dax to ask Victor?” The world knew Evert’s father as A. V. Dax, but we claimed this vicarious intimacy. Evert had already slipped away towards the window, and stood there peering into the quad. There was always some tension between him and Peter, who liked to provoke and even embarrass his friends. “Oh, I’m not sure about that,” said Evert, over his shoulder. “Things are rather difficult at present.” “Well, so they are for everyone,” said Charlie. Evert politely agreed with this, though his parents remained in London, where a bomb had brought down the church at the end of their street a few nights before. He said, rather wildly, “I just worry that no one would turn up.” “Oh, they’d turn up, all right,” said Charlie, with an odd smile. Evert looked round, he appealed to me—“I mean, what do you make of it, the new one?”

“Abu Mansour was sitting on the proprietor’s bench in the bathhouse to the right of the front door. He mumbled a response to the two men’s greetings, then pointed to the closet where they kept the clean folded towels. Saad took three towels and followed his master up three steps that lead to the western wing, where he helped him take off his clothes and cover up his nakedness with a loincloth he wrapped around his waist. He carefully folded his master’s clothes and placed them in a large silk garment bag. Then he took off his own clothes except for his drawers and put them into an old sack. He handed both bundles to Abu Mansour, who kept his head bowed down and said nothing.Before entering the bath proper, the master went into the toilet while Saad sat waiting on one of the benches. There were only three other men in the central foyer. Two of them sat on a bench opposite Saad, while the third, a tall, lean man, paced back and forth, crossing the large foyer from the front door to the back door.Saad was wondering what was wrong with Abu Mansour. He wanted to know if he was sick but didn’t dare ask. It wasn’t like him to sit at the entrance to the bathhouse like all the other bathhouse owners. He would rather have one of his employees sit there and take the customers’ belongings while he would skitter about, shuffling hurriedly from one room to another, bringing soap to a client or a basin to another, or perhaps a loincloth or a towel to whomever asked for one. He would stop to tell an amusing story or crack a joke that would make everyone roar with laughter. He was a portly man in his fifties, or maybe even his forties. He had a ruddy complexion, finely chiseled features, and a smooth, sleek beard. He had a small head and a big paunch that jounced whenever he laughed. But today, he just sat there, sullen-faced, greeting no one and saying nothing.“Who could be absolutely sure? Who?” Saad looked up and saw the tall thin man passing in front of him, pacing back and forth muttering these words to himself. As he walked he raised his shoulders so high that they almost reached his ears. One of the two men sitting down yelled out to him, “You’re making us dizzy. Why don’t you calm down and sit like everyone else?” But the man paid no attention and kept pacing and muttering to himself.“

I’m taking off today; I feel like crying— Just time to wave my handkerchief, I see; If all the world were one great gaudy poster, Cynic, I’d tear it, throw it in the sea.

Just like a fish, this vale of tears absorbed me, Its image, broken thirty times, composed; Now leave me, skylark, your great glorious error, If I must sing, I’d sob a bit, one knows.

The kerchief flutters down; the city opens— Grotesquely, at the tunnel’s mouth, it breaks; A pity death’s not just a long black journey, From which, in some unknown hotel, I’d wake.

You whom I loved like Andrea del Sarto, Turn a silk kerchief for fair women’s eyes; And, if you know death’s just a leap, a moment— Don’t flinch, now—Good day, goshawk!—up one flies!

Vertaald door Susan Reynolds

A City Of Towers

O hundred-towered Praguecity with fingers of all the saints with fingers made for swearing falsely with fingers from the fire & hail with a musician's fingers with shining fingers of a woman lying on her back

With fingers of asparagus with fingers with fevers of 105 degrees with fingers of frozen forest & with fingers without gloves with fingers on which a bee has landed with fingers of blue spruces

With fingers disfigured by arthritis with fingers of strawberries with spring water fingers & with fingers of bamboo

Undisturbed by joy or hatred.At her side two factory girlsIn slyly jaunty hats and swaggering coats,Weave a twinkling summer with their words:A summer where the night paradesRakishly, and like a gold Beau Brummel.With a gnome-like impudenceThey thrust their little, pink tongues outAt men who sidle past.To them, the frantic dinginess of dayHas melted to caressing restlessnessTingling with the pride of beasts and hips.At their side two dainty, languid girlsPlaying with their suavely tangled dresses,Touch the black crowd with unsearching eyes.But the old man on the corner,Bending over his cane like some tired warriorResting on a sword, peers at the crowdWith the smouldering disdainOf a King whipped out of his domain.For a moment he smiles uncertainly.Then wears a look of frail sternness.

Musty. Rabelaisian odours strayFrom this naïvely gilded family-entranceAnd make the body of a vagrantQuiver as though unseen roses grazed him.His face is blackly stubbled emptinessSwerving to the rotted prayers of eyes.Yet, sometimes his thin arm leaps outAnd hangs a moment in the air,As though he raised a violin of hateAnd lacked the strength to play it.A woman lurches from the family-entrance.With tense solicitude she hugsHer can of beer against her stunted bosomAnd mumbles to herself.The trampled blasphemy upon her faceHolds up, in death, its watery, barren eyes.Indifferently, she brushes past the vagrant:Life has peeled away her sense of touch.